Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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625. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the EU funds his Department accesses; the plans he is putting in place to access these funds to a greater degree in view of Brexit; if he will outline initiatives he is pursuing to establish access to new funds in view of the challenge of Brexit; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8814/17]

Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent)
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​Agencies under the remit of my Department and my Department access EU co-funding under EU Programmes such as the Connecting Europe Facility, Interreg and to a lesser extent Horizon 2020. Agencies under the remit of my Department also avail of European Investment Bank funding.

Concerns about the implications of the UK exit on current and future EU funding programmes were raised at the All-Island Transport and Logistics Sectorial Dialogue which I hosted in Dundalk on 23 January 2017. The Dialogue was attended by over 100 transport and civic representatives from North and South. EU funding, particularly for cross border projects, was one of the issues identified by representatives and indeed was one of the implications of the UK exit already identified by my Department.

As part of the Government structures put in place since the UK Referendum, an Inter-Departmental Group was established to assess the implications for EU funding programmes. My Department is represented on that Group. The analyses of the Group feeds into the overall Government analyses and response to the UK exit.